Wedding Day Diving

July 11th, 2015 two of our club divers were getting married on the beach where so many of us met. The day and night before was filled with exciting events. Some of these events were price changes on the cake, a cake mishap and even a flat tire on the way to the event. Needless to say we all needed a bit of a stress relief and were looking forward to getting into the water.

Saturday morning came extremely early for me because I was the one that got a flat tire in the middle of the night on the way to the resort. We arrived around 0130 early Saturday morning and woke up around 0700 to start preparing for the dive day. Despite waking up a bit later I was the first one up and around getting our tanks ready laying out gear. Jeff was the next one to arrive. We were lucky to get on the first boat dive (which is usually the best dive of the day) and it was going to be a deep dive.

Jeff needed to reach 100′ for some future course pre-req’s so we planned to dive down to 100′ and swim around the base of the Steel House (dive site) structure and then slowly return focusing on his drysuit skills and getting use to his new ANTARES dry gloves. On the way out to the site we met a new diver who dove as part of our team. The dive went almost as planned and we were rewarded with some good visibility and water temps (9 C). I say almost as planned because on my giant stride entry into the water I quickly discovered that my drysuit zipper was not 100% sealed…yep you guessed it, I got soaked. Once I felt the water I closed the suit and continued the dive since there wasn’t enough water in the suit to be a danger, just an annoyance.

After we got back from our first dive many of the wedding guests (bride & groom included) had finally woken up and were slowly getting ready. The bride and groom joined us on our 2nd dive which was another deep dive and this one would be the bride’s deepest dive to date, congrats Mandy! This dive site was 30 – 34M deep and the descent line ended on concrete cubes with small sealife and growth on it. Jeff, Austin and I descended to the bottom in one team and the bride and groom made up the other team. The visibility on this dive was even better however it was much colder at 5 C. Once our computers were nearing our no decompression limit we all returned to the surface making a very slow and deliberate ascent.

Once we returned from the second dive we cleaned and dried gear and began preparing for the wedding ceremony and reception. With the gear drying and time closing in we had to go and pickup 2 more people from the bus terminal and on the way back we ate some great Kimchi Jiggae and got to meet everyone that has traveled from around the world…wow what a crew indeed. We met some great people this weekend and some very talented musicians!

Running a bit late we all drove back to the hotel to finish getting ready for the wedding. Showers, getting dressed, doing hair, setting tables and food and of course bride pampering…oh yea and LOTS of up and down the stairs…we were finally ready just as the final moments of day were getting ready to come to an end. With the bride in my car and the groom waiting on the beach Eric walked Mandy down and gave her away to George. The ceremony was shared by close friends from Hong Kong, Fiji, Korea and the US and many 38th Parallel Divers too. Vows and rings exchanged, a kiss and an introduction the newly married couple was ready to begin their lives together. Congratulation Mandy and George! We are honored to be part of this day.

Now bring on the reception and make Laura Kenny sing another song…I will happily plug her music (on iTunes).